The interest in online games has only been growing in the last few months, given the current scenario the world is facing. In these times, the most popular and the biggest cricket game in the world, World Cricket Championship (WCC), has secured a coup of sorts, signing former Indian Test opener Aakash Chopra to provide commentary for the mobile game.
Aakash Chopra has made a name for himself as a Hindi commentator on cricket matches post his retirement, and now players will be able to listen to him while playing the latest version of the game, WCC 3, which was recently launched. By signing this deal with Chopra, Nextwave Multimedia, who owns the WCC franchise, has pulled off a first, with this being the first time a professional cricket commentator will be providing commentary for an Indian cricket game. The game is hugely popular, with 2.5 million daily active users and 15 million monthly active users, and apart from India, it also has a lot of users from the likes of Pakistan, Bangladesh, UAE, UK, and even the USA.
The recent global shutdowns have led to a spike in the numbers for WCC, with the game recording a 20% increase in revenue and a 25% spike in users. In-app purchases, meanwhile, have skyrocketed by almost 100%. This is, of course, being seen across the world with various games and sports, while there has also been an increase in online gambling and betting as people stuck inside look for newer forms of entertainment.
There are many gambling and betting websites which have seen huge surges in traffic during this time, with top online casinos rising in popularity. While there may not be any live sports for fans to bet on, the abundance of online casino games, along with various esports leagues, has been a decent, if not a like-for-like substitute. There are thus quite a few options for gambling and betting fans to bide the time till live sports action can return in some form. However, there may be some respite soon, with the Bundesliga, Germany’s top-flight football league, returning to action over the past weekend, while observing extremely strict social distancing protocols, and of course in empty stadiums.
Cricket fans will have been especially disappointed by the indefinite postponement of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the largest and most lucrative cricket league in the world, and sports betting fans will be even more downcast, as the league is one of the most popular ones for fans to bet on, despite sports betting being illegal in India. Every big sports betting website globally carries odds on the IPL, and so there is a sense of lost revenue from the tournament not being staged. Nevertheless, fans can at least enjoy the tournament virtually, with WCC 3 having the IPL as a playable tournament, albeit with different team names due to copyright restrictions. Nevertheless, the format remains the same as the real deal, while for Hindi users, Aakash Chopra’s commentary will be even more of a link to the actual tournament.
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